


Gardening

by sparklyslug



Series: a spell that can't be broken (one drop should be enough) [1]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 04:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyslug/pseuds/sparklyslug
Summary: “You wouldn’t call it romantic?” Sabrina asks, warming to the theme even though, to be honest, she hadn’t really meant much by using the word in the first place, apart from a general desire to get under Prudence’s skin. “The two of us, alone, out under the light of the harvest moon, when you’ve spent the whole witching hour planting flowers around my house while I slept.”





	Gardening

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series of unconnected Prudence/Sabrina ficls based on Witches of Inktober prompts by @stevieraedrawn. Fics can be read in any order.

Sabrina ignores it for as long as she can. Focuses on the soft noises Salem makes when he’s pretending that sleep is a thing he needs or wants, just because he thinks the concept is adorable. Focuses on the soft settling noises of the old house, the groans and echoes of shrieks that’ve been her nighttime companions for as long as she can remember. Tries to think instead about anything else: runes or Latin conjugation or spell castings she’s trying to memorize this week— anything apart from the tingling pressure right at the center of her forehead informing her that _she_ is doing _something_ right _there._

With an exaggerated sigh for the benefit of any unseen unholy creatures which might be watching, Sabrina sits up in bed. Well, if she can’t get to sleep. This might as well happen.

One clumsy search for her bathrobe and slippers later, Sabrina has made her way soundlessly down from her room and through the house’s unmappable twists and turns, out the back kitchen door and into the cool autumn night.

It’s not quiet or still, because cool autumn nights never are. Her arrival is greeted by a quick uptick in volume from the chittering clacking creatures that burrow and scuttle around the foundations of the old house, before they consider her sufficiently greeted and go back to their nighttime business. The trees at the forest’s edge toss their tips in a wind that looks fearsome, the way it shakes and shivers the old pines, but it reaches Sabrina as nothing more than a soft press of invisible fingertips over her collarbones, against the bare skin of her calves where her pajama pants are just a bit too short. The moon hangs above her, impossibly low and fat and curved into a sly yellow know-too-much smile.

And under the trees, perhaps the source of a high sweet whistle that whips in and out of hearing across the lawn, Prudence is taking an unhurried walk in the dark.

Sabrina watches her for a moment, the motion of the bobbing blonde head, the way her nightgown whips distractingly around the tops of her thighs, bare arms and bare legs bathed in buttery moonlight. Prudence has gone from a once-in-a-while part of her life, whose appearance usually meant things were about to take a turn for the downright horrific, into something every day. Something as habitual and familiar as riding a bike, and with every bit of the terror and fear of riding that bike right into highway traffic. And still it always takes a minute for Sabrina’s mind to accept Prudence as _real_. Not for, you know, Church of Night reasons. Just for Prudence reasons, reasons more related to how someone’s neck could curve above a lace collar or how they can apply a perfect smokey eye in the time it takes for Sabrina to blink sleep out of her eyes just before their first class in the morning. Reasons related to how her habitual nighttime wear is incredible impractical and almost certainly uncomfortable, and yet there she is. Prudence-y as ever, always at ease and always comfortable in her sheer impossible horrible beauty.

It takes a minute of taking this all in before Sabrina can focus on the main thing— the pressure thing, the tingling thing, the thing that even Salem’s fake-sleepy breaths couldn’t banish from her mind—the working that Prudence is casually putting down around the Spellman properly line.

Sabrina sighs, and starts to cross the lawn over to her. Almost-frosted grass crunches under the light step of her slippered feet, and Sabrina can almost feel how the moonlight that covers Prudence’s skin slides over her, the slight lurch of _welcome_ that comes with stepping out under a bright moon this near to the forest.

Prudence doesn’t turn or speak, but Sabrina knows the moment that Prudence realizes she’s no longer alone. It’s how the gentle waving gesture she’s been making with her arm becomes extended with a dancer’s flourish, it’s how Prudence tips her chin up because she thinks (she knows) that it sharpens the angle of her cheekbones and jaw into something fierce and frightening and beautiful.

Sabrina rolls her eyes. She could just say “hi” like a normal person.

“ _You_ could just say ‘hi,’ like a normal person,” Prudence says, and Sabrina twitches in surprise. Prudence laughs, low in her throat, and turns with theatrical slowness to face Sabrina at last.

“Not quite,” Prudence says, answering the question that Sabrina was very carefully _not_ thinking, “but it’s late and you’re tired, and completely useless at raising up any kind of proper mental defenses just at the moment. Or ever, should I say.”

“Yeah, well,” Sabrina says, feeling grouchy and very aware that she isn’t wearing a headband _or_ a bra, and is carefully not looking at what is apparently Prudence’s nightgown with a built-in _corset_ , God one day she just wants to see Prudence in sweatpants, purely for her own satisfaction. “What’s the point when everyone who wants to mess with me has all the subtlety of a high school marching band.”

Prudence’s eyebrow lifts. “A— what?”

“Nevermind,” Sabrina sighs. She puts her hands in her bathrobe pockets, feeling slightly shabby but at least glad for the warmth that Prudence couldn’t possibly be enjoying. “What’s going on? Is there a reason you’re circling my house like a total weirdo? Ghosts? Vampires? Weird Sister uprising? Need someone to starch those Puritan cuffs? One of the other usual emergencies?”

A raise of an elegant shoulder, a look of utter disdain communicating her shock that anyone could be so absolutely stupid, and Prudence turns around and continues her walk.

For lack of any other options, Sabrina joins her. There doesn’t seem to be any imminent danger at the moment, which is something new and different for them. And while she wouldn’t say that she trusts Prudence— would absolutely never say that, since no matter how many times they seem to turn up as allies, there are still just as many times when they are emphatically not— there’s little that Prudence can do to her when Sabrina’s well within sight of her house, and well within calling distance to the three extremely powerful witches within. Who all happen to be very light sleepers.

So she might as well walk.

Prudence’s pace is casual, but there is something in the angle of her shoulders that suggests—no, that absolutely is her trying to shield her right side and her waving arm from Sabrina’s eyes. She’s started the motion again, less razzmatazz now that she knows that she has Sabrina’s attention, and now that she knows that Sabrina knows that she knows (honestly, how exhausting it has to be to be Prudence sometimes). But still there, a slight horizontal flick of the wrist almost like— like she’s scattering something over the ground.

Sabrina watches with interest while they round the corner of the property and begin to head along the drive that leads to the front of the house.

“It’s normally impossible to get you to _stop_ talking, so this is just downright unsettling,” Prudence remarks, without looking at Sabrina. “Familiar got your tongue?”

“Just enjoying this romantic moonlit stroll,” Sabrina says easily, knowing that nothing gets Prudence quite so steamed up as when Sabrina doesn’t react to one of her barbs.

“ _Romantic_ ,” Prudence repeats, her mortals-are-such-fools voice a little undercut by the low hum in her voice, almost a catch in the throat, and the almost imperceptible cut of her eyes towards Sabrina’s and then quickly away again.

“You wouldn’t call it romantic?” Sabrina asks with all the innocence she can muster in her terry-cloth bathrobe, warming to the theme even though, to be honest, she hadn’t really meant much by using the word in the first place, apart from a general desire to get under Prudence’s skin. “The two of us, alone, out under the light of the harvest moon, when you’ve spent the whole witching hour planting flowers around my house while I slept.”

It was half a shot in the dark, but it’s hit home. Prudence whirls around, eyes flashing properly now in a way that calls an answering sharp smile onto Sabrina’s face, anticipation for the fireworks ahead sparking in her gut. It’s always this way, especially lately. Prudence isn’t a figure of terror to her anymore. When she sees her stalking across the Unseen Academy’s foyer or through the forest, a fight ramrod straight in her spine and brimstone practically curling out from between her lips, Sabrina can’t help it—  she’s excited for what might come next.

“ _Flowers_ , is it?” Prudence spits, and thrusts the previously-concealed small cloth bag she’s been holding in her hand under Sabrina’s nose. “Yes, take a look at your _flowers_.”

Sabrina takes the bag, making no sign that she’s too aware of the way her fingers slide over Prudence’s, keeping her hand steady even as she notes that despite her extremely-inappropriate-for-a-November-night attire, she’s warm to the touch.

It doesn’t take Sabrina any time at all to identify the bag’s contents. She takes one of the seed pods, tufted with silver at the top, between her fingertips, and she looks up at Prudence.

“Dandelions?” She says. “You’re planting a ring of dandelions around my house?”

Prudence takes a step back, hearing something in Sabrina’s voice that she doesn’t care for. “Perfect for you, half-breed,” she snarls, low. “Unwanted, scrubby yellow weeds that no one wants or has any use for. They get everywhere, no matter how hard you try to keep them out. And they’re stubborn little monsters, sure that they can survive anywhere. Until of course,” regaining some composure, she steps back up close to Sabrina and looks imperiously down at her. “Someone rips them out of the ground.”

“Sure,” Sabrina says slowly. “But you get that you’re doing, like, the opposite of that, right?”

Prudence’s eyes narrow.

“Besides,” Sabrina says, reaching slowly for Prudence’s hand and raising it, placing the bag of dandelion seeds back in her palm. “You’re wrong.”

“Oh really?” Prudence hisses, but makes no move to take her hand out of Sabrina’s, her fingers slack and open around the black velvet bag. “I forgot I was talking to the Hellfire-conjuring prodigy who still somehow can’t manage even a basic scrying spell. Enlighten me.”

Sabrina frowns now. That’s a fresh wound from just this week, and she’s no less frustrated about it tonight than she was Monday night when they had their first lesson on the stupid scrying stuff. But, she reminds herself, this is Prudence. Don’t let her distract you.

“They’re not unwanted,” she says simply. This is an early lesson, absorbed when she would sit at the kitchen counter with Hilda, kicking her short stubby legs as she wove the sunny blooms together into a crown and listened to her aunt’s happy burble of conversation. “Dandelions are old magic. Very old. And powerful magic, every part of them— root, stalk, and flower. For protection. And healing. Especially after a… difficult autumn.”

She stands, with Prudence’s hand in hers, and decides that that’s enough. For now.

Prudence looks at her impassively. There might be a smile attempting to break free at one corner of her mouth, but Sabrina is maybe just hoping to see it there, the way she’s pretty much always hoping to see it there.

“Like I said,” Prudence says. In more or less her normal tone of smooth disdain, though it’s a little undone by how she raises her free hand to Sabrina’s face, taking a wayward strand of silver hair between her fingers and fumbling it a little clumsily back over Sabrina’s ear. “Perfect for you.”

The hair doesn’t stay tucked back, swinging back out and across Sabrina’s eyes in the next moment. She shakes it out of her face impatiently, annoyed—- and that’s all the distraction Prudence seems to need. Her fingers tighten around the bag instantly, raising it between their faces, which somehow— when?— tipped close enough almost to share a whisper.

With a quick puff of breath, Prudence sends the seeds inside exploding out into Sabrina’s face, sending her sputtering back, flapping her hands uselessly at the cloud of white.

It takes the slimmest sliver of a moment, but when Sabrina’s vision has cleaned and she’s assured herself that she’s not about to somewhat humiliatingly be murdered by _dandelions_ , Prudence is gone. Sabrina is alone in her yard, the moon a witch-perfect crescent above her, her hair and mouth and clothes full of scratchy seed pods.

Back in her room, still picking tufts of silver fluff out of her hair as she slides back under the covers, she entertains thoughts about how she might pay back Prudence for her “gift” once the dandelion circle blooms in the spring.

 _Maybe I’ll make her her own crown of dandelions_ , she thinks. _She’d be so furious_. And she falls asleep with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> First in a series of drabbles, taken from @stevieraedrawn's Witches of Inktober 2018 prompts. Because I needed more Prudence/Sabrina the MINUTE I finished CAOS and as they say, you gotta be the fic you wanna see in the world.


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